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As posted before, Sirius and xms merger is a good reason not to. When they merged certain channels went bye bye. I don't want to see that happen to DirecTV. How would DirecTV customers benefit from this and please please please don't say the P12N. I don't see anything Dish has thatt DirecTV doesn't offer.

As posted before, Sirius and xms merger is a good reason not to. When they merged certain channels went bye bye. I don't want to see that happen to DirecTV. How would DirecTV customers benefit from this and please please please don't say the P12N. I don't see anything Dish has thatt DirecTV doesn't offer.

It would be great for consumers! Consumers that have a dream of 10,000 shopping and pay-per-view channels!

If it is done in an effort to keep subscription prices at bay, I wouldn't mind. But I think a hundred would suffice given the amount of duplications.

Well a merger can give the room to add WEST HD feeds as well.

I sense that is a distinct possibility. There are quite a handful of west feeds of basic cable channels like TNT and TBS.______________________________________________________

We shouldn't get too carried away with this. Like many others, the SiriusXM merger is still fresh in my memory. I was an XM sub from March '03 til the merger when XM's creativity pretty much went out the window in favor of Sirius' business model and from what I understood, things haven't been the same since.

Pardon my ignorance but I wonder how much it would cost to replace all the individual satellite dishes and to make interoperable receivers that would access both sets of programming? Aren't we having enough trouble with migrating customers from SD to HD as it is?

Subscribed to DirecTV for NFL Sunday Ticket, remained a subscriber for international football.

If allowed, I bet it would go down like D*'s Primestar acquisition in the '90s. Primestar was completely shut down within 6 months and existing customers got a bit of a break on D* equipment if you transitioned over. I think it would probably take a few years but the same principle would apply here, Dish would get shut down.

This merger would be disastrous for rural customers now just as much as it was 10 years ago when Dish tried to buy D*. Cable in many smaller areas either does not reach rural houses and/or doesn't come close to the HD offerings of either D* or E*. Unfortunately what is best for the consumer doesn't often enter into these things...

You can't compare it to Sirius XM because that was done out of necessity.

I would compare it more to the Sprint/Nextel merger where it was in name only really for many years because it wasn't worth swapping out the equipment.

While less competition would impact rural people from being able to jump back and forth it would allow them to not have rate increases as high as before because of the negotiating power. Both companies use national pricing so therefor the rural markets wouldn't be "singled" out because they could be.

You can't compare it to Sirius XM because that was done out of necessity.

I would compare it more to the Sprint/Nextel merger where it was in name only really for many years because it wasn't worth swapping out the equipment.

While less competition would impact rural people from being able to jump back and forth it would allow them to not have rate increases as high as before because of the negotiating power. Both companies use national pricing so therefor the rural markets wouldn't be "singled" out because they could be.

This.

People comparing this to Sirius-XM are way off base IMO.

Apples and Oranges.

Long way down the road if ever, but I can't see much downside from the financial aspect for consumers in this particular case.

Pro-consumer in terms of lowering costs? Since when did making a monopoly lower prices? Anybody in the financial department of DirecTV take Econ 101 in college?

It's competition that lowers costs.

It's monopolies that maximize profit.

Yeah, a merger would be great for DirecTV, but pro-consumer? Is he joking?

The key is to contain costs, doesn't mean it will lower them. In other words, retard the rate of increases.

When you have 35 million customers you have that much more buying power than if you have 20 million. No different than a WalMart, etc. You can get better pricing.

It's inevitable prices are going to continue to go up because the content providers are not going to take cuts there. The next question, however, is whether that rate of increase can be slowed which would benefit consumers. Now, there is no doubt consumers will say their prices are still going up, so where is the benefit. That's not the way to think about it in my opinion. No different than the Viacom DIRECTV situation. At the end of the day, Directv is still having to pay Viacom about 20% increase which means customer bills are going up, but they would have gone up more if Viacom got their way.

The key is to contain costs, doesn't mean it will lower them. In other words, retard the rate of increases.

When you have 35 million customers you have that much more buying power than if you have 20 million. No different than a WalMart, etc. You can get better pricing.

It's inevitable prices are going to continue to go up because the content providers are not going to take cuts there. The next question, however, is whether that rate of increase can be slowed which would benefit consumers. Now, there is no doubt consumers will say their prices are still going up, so where is the benefit. That's not the way to think about it in my opinion. No different than the Viacom DIRECTV situation. At the end of the day, Directv is still having to pay Viacom about 20% increase which means customer bills are going up, but they would have gone up more if Viacom got their way.

I agree, but those customers that only have satellite as an option will be forced into a single provider. Thats not good, since there is no competition then in those areas, so I see HUGE price increases, maybe even regional prices. Look at Wild blue, even Directway.

The key is to contain costs, doesn't mean it will lower them. In other words, retard the rate of increases.

When you have 35 million customers you have that much more buying power than if you have 20 million. No different than a WalMart, etc. You can get better pricing.

Satelliteracer, you are exactly right. A monopoly does have the power to lower their own costs, or retard the rate of increase, as you point out.

As a customer, that's not the first cost I'm worried about. It's the cost of the service to me that is primarily on my mind.

A monopoly has the ability to set prices. They are outside of the standard competition model. OPEC in the 1970s was the classic monopoly. They controlled the majority of the world's oil supply and they could set the price. We saw gas go from 29¢ a gallon to over $1.50 in just a few years.

A monopoly has the best of both worlds. They can lower their own costs because, as you point out, they have more leverage as a buyer, and they can raise the price to their customer since the customer has no where else to go.

This is why monopolies are so profitable.

The question is, would a merger of DirecTV and Dish be viewed as a monopoly? Could they pull off both of these tricks, lowering their costs and setting their price?

Certainly, as you say, they can do the first. They will have greater buying power. But will there still be competition, with other television choices for the consumer that will keep the price they can charge in check?

In many rural markets, this will certainly not be the case. There is no alternative for television beyond OTA, DirecTV or Dish, and in some of those markets, OTA doesn't work, either. In terms of geography, this could be half the country, if not more. A person more knowledgeable than me would have to determine how much of the population this would cover. My guess would be around 10%.

I am discounting the Internet for a source for rural cable television because for those folks, their Internet is probably still dial-up. If they could hook up a cable modem, they could also hook up cable TV. DSL doesn't work well when run miles from a substation.

The more populated parts of the country could have alternatives to a DirecTV/Dish merger, and more than they did in 2003. The idea that there is one cable system for each town yesterday's concept. Often the local phone company is offering TV. There can be other landline providers of television. This might keep a DirecTV/Dish merger from being viewed as a monopoly. We'll see. That's a call for folks a lot more swift than an old stereo salesman on an Internet board.

It will be pro-consumer for those consumers who are DirecTV shareholders.

Longtime XM subs who lived through the Sirius "merger" can tell you how well that worked out for the consumer.

For the life of me I don't know why people keep bringing this up. Satellite radio is far different than TV. For starters there is tons of competition for most of what Sirius XM offers and more importantly is the fact that without that merger one or both of them would have gone out of business in short order anyway leaving us in the same situation.

And for what it's worth, subscribers are now able to subscribe to a limited number of stations for a reduced fee. I took advantage of that myself. I don't need Howard Stern, Playboy, Martha Stewart, etc. I just listen to music and a few news stations as well as weather and traffic.

I would argue it did work out for the customer. Without the Sirius-XM merger, likely neither company is around right now. If they are both gone, how does that benefit the consumer?

It's more than just dollars and cents, it's the bigger picture.

Sirius vs. XM was always a race to the bottom. Neither company was making money. The question was: who would run out of money first?

We found out the answer. It was XM.

I agree only one would survive. It doesn't make it a better deal for the consumer. I used to have 4 radios on my XM account. I gave them away for Christmas presents to nieces and nephews, with the agreement I'd continue to pay for their service as long as their grades stayed up. Now I have two radios on my account, one for my home and one for my car, and the money I pay to SiriusXM is about the same.

Yes, the merger kept the company alive and for that I'm grateful. I was a great deal for the listener but no, it was not a boon to the consumer.

Edited by Carl Spock, 22 September 2012 - 07:29 AM.Thinking about it further, I never had more than 4 radios at one time on my XM account. Initially, I said 5.

I guess you haven't taken notice of their unprecedented success under his leadership.

Yea he is pumping some short term profits at the expense of customers to drive stock price. It will all come crashing down. A net 52,000 loss of subscribers last quarter and profits are up....so you spend less on sign up promotions this quarter and get a profit. That strategy can work in the short term, but in the long term you cannot ignore this.